Blake Goodman's father haunted by fact that operator of car that killed UMass student hasn't been found

Blake GoodmanAMHERST – Just after 10 p.m. on Sept. 12, friends Blake Goodman and John Deary hopped on their bikes to ride about a mile down Montague Road in North Amherst to buy beer.
They were on their way home when a car struck and killed the 21-year-old Goodman and injured the 24-year-old Deary.
It’s been a month now, and police still do not know who is responsible.
Police were able to determine that the car which struck the men was a black Geo Prizm made between 1993 and 1997, according to Goodman’s father Robert Goodman. He said police analyzed some chips of paint, but the car had been repainted.
Goodman, who lives in Wakefield, said he needs to know who killed his son. Not knowing, he said, is “brutal.
“I don’t care what happens to this person,” he said. “It’s not going to change anything.” But he wants to tell whoever it is how horrible it was “leaving somebody in the street not knowing whether they were alive or dead ... not knowing if they could have saved their lives.”
“It’s a nightmare,” Goodman said, something he won’t be able to have closure about until the driver is found. One thing is certain, however, he said: “Blake would never have done that.”
He believes the car is being hidden and, even if the driver won’t confess, somebody has to know who “has a car like that. Why haven’t they spoken out?”
Goodman is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads police to the driver.

He said police are wondering whether the driver was from the Albany, N.Y., area. That evening the University of Massachusetts Minutemen football team trounced Albany 44-7 in the home opener. The game began at 6 p.m. at McGuirk Stadium. More than 13,000 attended the game at the stadium about 10 minutes away from the accident site.

Goodman thinks the driver had to be drunk or on drugs and “their only thought was ‘saving myself.’”

Blake Goodman was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts and was taking a semester off to travel, planning to visit Asia. He wanted to take the semester to figure out what he wanted to do, according to his father.

“He wanted to go to Japan,” his father said.

Robert Goodman said his son had lived with him from the time Blake was 11 after he and Blake’s mother divorced. “He loved his movies. We talked about movies for hours,” Robert Goodman said. “He was so happy. He was just good kid. He always had a smile on his face. He wasn’t a wise guy. He wasn’t trying to be tough.

“No parent should outlive your children,” Goodman added. This is the kind of thing people see on the news, he said. “It never happens to you. We always think it happens to someone else.”

How to help
Anyone with any information about the fatal Sept. 12 accident on Montague Road in North Amherst is asked to notify Amherst police. Call: (413) 259-3000, or the CRIMETIP hotline, (413) 259-3344